Digital images have become commonplace in interactive media such as web pages on the World Wide Web. In many systems the image is captured by a digital camera and stored as an image file, which an online user can later view. Digital images can also be captured by a digital camera and stored in a digital picture database using the memory mechanisms (e.g., hard drive, CD RW, diskette, etc.) of a personal computer (PC). Whether the user's computer operates in a stand-alone mode, or as a remote terminal, he/she can retrieve database pictures for viewing and printing by an attached printer.
The number of digital pictures, and hence the size of digital picture databases continues to grow, as the costs of digital cameras and memory continue to drop. It is becoming more common for a user to have stored in a digital picture database, many more pictures (even using “thumbnails” for initial viewing) than can be displayed on one or a few display screens. Finding particular pictures of interest in a large picture database can be challenging using methods typically available, for example, in the Windows® and Macintosh® operating systems. Users must typically open directories, and several folders and files, often painstakingly perusing each of a large number of digital images in an effort to find those of interest. Further, there is often no efficient way to retrieve groups of pictures not stored in the same files or folders, which the user may nonetheless, desire to retrieve and display in the same group.
To browse pictures in a picture database, some prior art techniques marginally improve upon the aforementioned brute force methods by allowing a user to introduce a single comment pertaining to each individual picture. A subsequent search of the picture database allows the user to not only view each picture, but also a particularized comment about each picture to help decide whether a picture is of interest. Even with this improvement, prior art picture database users must still painstakingly browse each picture to find those of interest. Even when prior art GUIs allow the user to store a comment for an individual picture, they are not often user-friendly, and the comments are often restricted to technical information (such as the file format, the compression technique used, and resolution).
What is therefore greatly needed, is a graphical user interface that allows users to easily and meaningfully augment picture database information in a manner which leads to an improvement in the picture database browsability.